Category: Uncategorized

Having spent the better part of the last year in a lonely holding pattern, this is probably one of the most powerful, beautiful and inspiring definitions of love– and one of the best scientific explorations of the emotion and its biological implications– that I’ve ever come across.

Love is a ” ‘micro-moment of positivity resonance,’ essentially any small interaction in which we genuinely connect with another human.

via How You Can Fall In Love Every Day, According To Science | Co.Design: business + innovation + design.

 

Last Saturday, I took to Twitter for a tear-soaked, heartbroken rant full of feelings about what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. As I was a student at Virginia Tech in 2007– yes, I was there when it happened– the catastrophic loss of life there hit incredibly close to home for me. Because I regularly interact with (and sometimes visit) teachers and students at work, I was absolutely beside myself.

I do so wish that I were stronger at times like this, that I could do more than spend an entire week sobbing because these things can and are still happening. I’ve seen it all before– the rampant spreading of misinformation, the plastering of the shooter’s face all over the news, the search for a motive, the front page of the paper in all black with the names of the victims, the cameras shoved in the face of people in mourning, the stories of the victims being told one by one, the social media reaction, the heroic teachers who saved lives, the heartbreak, the terror, the caskets, the everything– and I’m so, so sorry that gun violence on this scale could ever happen again, especially to such young, innocent children.

As Nikki Giovanni so aptly put it in her convocation speech, “No one deserves a tragedy.”  These tragedies happen too regularly– every four months, on average–  and the lives of many children are touched by gun violence each day. It happens in Syria, in China, in communities across our nation and across the world. Not everyone who is a victim or survivor of gun violence gets the same outpouring of grief, love, and support that is happening now for that tiny town in Connecticut. President Obama surely doesn’t show up every time a student is killed in a disadvantaged or impoverished neighborhood.

We have to do everything in our power to make it so that these things can never happen again— for Sandy Hook, for Aurora, for Gabby Giffords, for Paducah, for Columbine, for that little Amish school in Nickel Mines, for Virginia Tech, for our children, for our teachers, and for the victims, for the survivors. Anything less is completely, utterly unacceptable.

Anything less and we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Social media– it’s on all day, every day, unless a site outage, massive security hack or act of God/nature decides to shut everything down with a screeching halt. If you’re part of a specific community or monitor certain topics as part of your job or for professional development– or hell, I don’t know, IF YOU’RE HUMAN– it’s easy to be overwhelmed or feel trapped in an echo chamber. If you’re like most people, a day, a week, or some similar period of disengagement can be a great time to disconnect, reflect and recharge.

If you’re me, or like me and social media is part of your job… disengagement just isn’t an option. With that in mind, here are a few ways I’ve found prevent or cope with burnout on the social web.

• Limit your access. If you find yourself constantly tempted to check a social network “just one more time” because you’re afraid of missing an all important update… don’t. Great, significant or valuable content will always find a way to resurface. If you’re especially worried about what happens in your feed when you’re gone, especially on Twitter– don’t be. They send digests of tweets you may have missed, and you can even select to be notified every time that someone of significance to you fires off a tweet. Budget yourself a certain amount of time each day, resist the urge to see what’s going on every waking minute, and leave it at that until you feel prepared to throw yourself back into the three-ring social media circus. Alternately, be sure to pick only access point to consume/create social media content– through the site, a client, or mobile app. Pick just one, and only one– and stick to it.
• Turn off as many notifications as possible. Chances are that if you’re a social media-a-holic (myself, I prefer the term ‘technologically inclined’), you’re also an app-o-holic of sorts and you have ways of being constantly connected to social media networks through a mobile device. (If you aren’t yet, don’t worry… Facebook and everyone else is working on the mobile problem for you.) But if you’re nearing burnout, meaningless noise, interruptions and emails from social media apps may be just the thing to push you closer to the edge than ever before. Turn off as many emails as you can, or just filter them, to handle the notification clutter in your Inbox. And as soon as you’ve done that, turn to your mobile device’s app settings to do the rest. Until app developers stop the notification madness, turning off push notifications that provide no value to you may just be the only option to keep  you sane.
• Filter, filter, filter. If you’re working in social media, or if you use it for professional development… chances are that you probably access social media networks (again, Twitter) through a client like Tweetdeck or a 3rd party app (but not for long) like Tweetbot. It happens to everyone: there’s one story, one influencer, one topic or one person whose tweets you can’t stand– but yet you can’t block or unfollow them. In these cases, where you don’t want to be caught unfollowing someone for personal or professional reasons (yes, you can find out who unfollowed you), the only thing you can do is open up your Settings, find your “Global Filter” or “Blacklist,” and type in whatever app, name, keyword, topic or user whose content you cannot stand to see. After you hit “Save” or “Apply” or “Update” or whatever those kids call it these days, you’ll have peace and quiet for as long as you’d like. While this will only work inside of the client that you use, not within the site itself… it’s most certainly a breath of fresh air when you need it most.
• Make a list, or lots of lists. And use them. If you’re really in the middle of a sneaky hate spiral, and you can’t bear the sight of your Timeline or News Feed, make a list. Lists are a great way to keep track of people, brands, news outlets or anyone/thing you’d like to keep track of the most, especially in a hurry, and they work on both Facebook and Twitter.  An easy way to start is to group accounts by vertical or by relationship to you, though I prefer keeping a list of accounts I’d want to see if I only had 10 minutes a day to check Twitter and Facebook. Lists, thank goodness, can be public or private… so no one has to find out that that NeNe Leakes is your homegirl and that you’re addicted to reality TV.*
• Don’t use your news feed as your primary means of content discovery. In “real life”, it’s easy and natural to become annoyed when you’ve spent too much time with a friend or group of people– and the same follows for those with whom we interact online. It’s incredibly important not to be too focused or too connected to social networks every spare moment of your day, and to keep an eye on the primary sources from which much of the content you consume emanates. If you’re a blog reader who wants to cut down on blog noise from social media network pushes, access the blogs you follow in an RSS reader. Too much fluff, too many echo chambers and too much noise if left unfiltered may just be your undoing–  which is why we have nice things like Flipboard, Instapaper, and Pocket to aggregate content for later consumption.

When it comes to social media- especially in consuming and creating content– quality will always be better metric than quantity for success. Spending too much time consuming content doesn’t make you an expert. Sharing the same content across multiple social networks without thought to the best way to use the tools you have at hand does not make you an expert. A high follower count does not make you a guru of social media.  Having an account on every social media network in existence does not make you an expert, either– rather it’s called being a jack of all trades, and a master of none.

Want to avoid social media burnout in its entirety? Think carefully about how and when you consume social media. Be thoughtful about the networks through which you choose to engage and about the tools you use to create and consume content. Be sure to follow a few accounts for no other reason than that they make you laugh or they provide you with a much-needed break. Always be open to following and expanding your own social network, but be mindful to weed out content sources that are no longer of value to you, too. The secret, really… it isn’t a secret at all. Social media is all about knowing when to step away. Don’t worry– when you leave, even if it’s for an hour, a day, a month, or a year… it will always be there when you’re ready to come back. 

I’ve been thinking alot about Facebook lately, not just because it’s my job or because you can’t go anywhere in the world without hearing about it, but because my relationship with the social network has been a point of stress for me over the past few months. I have no intention of joining the post-IPO, Mashable media-fueled hate-and-negativity fest currently surrounding the social network. On the contrary, I’ve had an account for almost 8 years, and as of late I am more sad than anything that I just don’t know what to do with it.

For years, I’ve sworn that I wouldn’t remove pictures and posts from my Facebook account, mostly because I considered them all a part of important memories that I had built with friends, classmates and professors. I refused to pull anything down– I was the world’s most boring college student, it’s not like there was anything to censor, anyway!– and while this argument felt valid to me for a very long time, it just doesn’t hold water anymore.

Over the past eight years, I’ve done quite a bit of living (and learning). I’ve made new friends, met incredible people, ended relationships, began relationships, studied abroad, been part of one of the largest mass shooting tragedies in American history, struggled to define myself after college… I’ve even moved ~3,000 miles across the country in pursuit of happiness. And Facebook, which has been there since I legally became an adult,  it’s just there waiting for me to update,  wanting me to share my experiences and countless other preferences, orientations, relationships and life changes– expecting or hoping for a child, anyone?— on my Timeline. Except I can’t bring myself to reduce my life experiences into neatly packaged updates of  “Status”, “Photo”, “Place” or “Life Event.” Sure, on some level I am a summation of all of these things– but isn’t it also true that sometimes, a whole is more than just the sum of its parts?

I’ve been struggling with Facebook for awhile– since I moved, since Timeline launched, since frictionless sharing injected an entirely new round of spammy noise into my News feed, since my “network” has grown to include new friends, peers, former colleagues and coworkers who only know me as I am not, not as who I was before I moved here. I have almost eight years of personal history– read: inane status messages, unpopular opinions, silly groups, photo albums– following me, and even with an entire suite of tools, options and filters meant to manage them all, it’s just… it’s too much. Yes, I could set privacy filters to prevent certain albums from being visible to certain lists and groups, but it’s a work-intensive, non-intuitive undertaking in which I’d have to personally organize and choose settings for each friend, list and album. Sharing is important— but so is a knowing when not to share. And what personal benefit would I stand to gain from freely exposing so much private information when I should be busy doing whatever it is that I’m supposed to be doing in life?

About a month ago, I logged in to Facebook and did something I never thought that I would do– I made many of my albums private, I untagged myself in countless photos, and I changed the settings of frictionless sharing apps to “Only Me.” As someone who works in and has an academic interest in social media, I understand the logic, the systems, the thought process behind why the default setting of the social web is “Public.”  I get that there is a powerful engine of open graphing and interest graphing behind everything we do on social networks– but I just don’t see how any of  this open sharing happening on Facebook is making my life and my relationships any better, much less those of anyone else. (Not even the marketers, y’all– Facebook ads just don’t work.)

To be honest, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the natural progressions of social networks and the communication that goes on within them. I am intrigued by and hopeful for what’s next.  Interest-based social media networks make sense, but with smaller groups of users, very few if any of them will ever see a userbase as large as Facebook or Twitter. Who will fund them, and how? And what of the cluster of social apps built around romantic relationships? A friend–  her startup aims to improve the relationships we have with one those we love– eloquently writes about using technology to enhance relationships here. While I’m not sure that I could bring myself to ask a partner or my social-media averse darling to test a social network built around our relationship– what if he thinks I’m weird? or if he doesn’t want to open the date-box because he thinks it is silly? what if he thinks that the in-app thumb kiss is stupid?! would we be overconnected? what happens to the data, who kills it, if it doesn’t work out?!– my heart is happy to know that there are people, smart people, trying to solve the problem of how to address and counteract the negative consequences social media can have on relationships. And yes, these things make me happy even if I’m not in a position (just yet) to use them.

When it comes to my complicated relationship with Facebook, I’m entirely open to the idea that everyone else is doing it right, and I’m the one doing it wrong. I’m not even friends with my favorite person (yes, darling, that’s you) on Facebook, though we speak every day and though our friendship is one of the most important relationships in my life. I could be doing it wrong, all wrong, but with users spending less time than ever on the site, and with so many people I know deactivating their accounts entirely, it can’t be just me. I can only hope that, as more and more of the world becomes connected, there’s a serious, meaningful shift in thought to privacy and discretion across the entire social media sphere. Until then– I can’t deactivate my profile for professional reasons– all I can do is disengage… and hope for the best.

(Don’t worry– I won’t hold my breath.)

If I learned one thing while I was visiting family in Virginia over the past week, it was this:

I am completely, entirely, categorically, wholly San Franciscan now. (And I couldn’t be happier about it.)

More than year ago now– fifteen months, to be exact– I boarded a flight to SFO with a one-way ticket, big hopes and dreams in my heart, and an alarming lack of money in my pocket. I was done with college, I was finished with the concept of graduate school and burnt out at the prospect of even pursuing a PhD (something I had aspired to earn since my age was in single digits). Despite my education, finding a job in my home state had been next to impossible, and my dream job just didn’t exist there. Having set my heart on living in a big city at a very young age, I knew that I had to get out of Virginia and that if I didn’t do it quickly, I would feel like I had failed myself and that all of the work I had done to educate myself so that I could leave was in vain.

Once I got off the plane, I felt so selfish and guilty for leaving my friends and family behind that I avoided even discussing the first time I got home.

My first few months in the Bay Area were pretty shitty, but my love of my new city carried me through. I landed a string of unglamorous jobs– a crappy nonprofit, tutoring, an embarrassingly underpaid position in a prominent SF gallery– and stumbled from sublet to roommate to sublet and from interview to interview hoping that I would be one of the lucky liberal arts majors who was smart enough and savvy enough to make it in the tech industry with no knowledge whatsoever of coding or computer engineering.

When my interview at Twitter didn’t go my way– and neither did the one at Facebook or Square, I was incredibly heartbroken. Around the same time, I interviewed with a quiet little startup and took the first position they offered me. I spent three months juggling two part time positions, one which sent me to a few fantastic, far-flung places with little notice and another that saw me spending almost 3 hours a day just commuting. It was difficult and exhausting and I still don’t quite know how I made it through, but I did and I met some fantastic, incredible, inspiring, world-changing, problem-solving people along the way… people I would have never known, people I should have never known given the measurable statistics attached to my existence.

For the better part of a year, I avoided any talk of an official visit to Virginia to visit family or friends. I had quit feeling guilty for moving, but the idea of leaving the City panicked me. I had finally landed my dream job and didn’t want to take vacation time yet, the last place I wanted to be during the holidays was stuck at the dinner table with an arguing family (multiple divorces = major grudges and politics)… And I had just started to fall in love with San Francisco thanks to weekends full of exploring with a new friend. Why would I leave, even for just a few days, when my love affair with the city had just heated up?! It wasn’t until I started laying plans for summer at work that I felt that I needed to visit my family.

Last week, I finally did just that.

As I drove around, roads and buildings that should have been familiar to me felt anything but. When I scanned the streets, it was as if an incongruity alarm in my head had gone off and only I could hear the sirens, I looked around and none of it made sense– where were the hills? The skyscrapers? My brain felt like an incompletely downloaded Google Map overlay; I kept trying to load the map in my head, in my heart… but all my eyes wanted to see was San Francisco, all my ears wanted to hear we’re city noises. I was in Virginia and I was with family, but I was not home anymore.

Before I left, two people very dear to me said one very important thing to me– that even though I was leaving San Francisco, no one could take it away from me. As I prepare for my landing at SFO in the next few minutes, I realize now more than ever that they are right, very, very right. I don’t know why I ever felt that going back would take this beautiful, infinite place away from me… But I do know this.

In ten minutes, I’ll be home. And home, San Francisco, is where my heart is.